Spy der Mann's Journal: Unmake the Loom, Bobbin! Unmake the Loom!

I'm thinking of the current problems of the internet, like SPAM, botnets, the Storm virus, corporate censorship (read-as: RIAA), etc.

And then I remembered an old videogame called "Loom", which reminds me of the chaotic state in which the world is today.

Once upon a time, there lived a young weaver named Bobbin Threadbare. He had started to use magical powers known as weaving.

The Elders considered Bobbin was dangerous to them, and decided to Trascend him (something like executing him), but Bobbin's long-dead mother came from Beyond in the form of a swan, and trascended the Elders, turning them into swans - and everyone in town. Bobbin was left alone (except for his stepmother, Hetchel - who was turned into a duck by the elders), and it was his turn to find the flock and join them.

But there was an evil being who wanted to conquer the world - thanks to a stupid cleric who called him, Chaos was now free to destroy the world.

Chaos had been looking for the treasure of the weavers: The Great Loom. The Loom allowed one to spin threads into the very fabric of the universe. If Chaos got hold of the Loom, evil would reign in the universe - forever.

At the end, Bobbin had to fight Chaos - but Chaos was stronger than him! Then, Bobbin listened to Mother Hetchel's advice:

"Unmake the Loom, Bobbin! Unmake the Loom!"

And by using the "unmake" thread, Bobbin split the Loom in two, rendering it unusable. But at the same time, Bobbin split the entire universe in half.

Then, Bobbin used his magic to Trascend himself and be freed from the fabric of the universe. Finally, he and the rest of the flock CARRIED the half of the universe that was free from Chaos, and began to prepare a universe free from evil, free from chaos. When that new universe were finished, they would join it with the other half and save the people trapped with chaos.

What does this have to do with the internet? Well - chaos has invaded it - just as it did with the universe in the videogame.

How to solve it? I think that "Splitting the Loom" would be a nice idea. Make a NEW internet, free from today's internet problems, on top of the OLD internet!

The way to do this is by decentralizing the internet's services. Name servers, e-mail, everything. There are various projects which more or less have been successful at the small scale. just search in Wikipedia for "Anonymous P2P","darknet", "Friend-to-friend", "Distributed Hash Table". Tons of projects in there.

I've been recently testing one or two of them, and I've found them rather slow, but with a lot of potential due to their decentralized infrastructure.

It is impossible to take down one of the servers in an overlay network, because everything's decentralized.

Now imagine everyone had their e-mail access going through an anonymous, encrypted P2P network. A network without boundaries, without fear. Without SPAM. Without DOS attacks. A network without chaos.

Edit: Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about Anonymous P2P and darknets as the goal or the medium. What I'm talking about here is DECENTRALIZATION. There are wonderful algorithms for decentralized websites and forums out there, but they need people to start working on them. If you would like to program the pillars for tomorrow's internet, start researching, get organized and start coding, you can do it!

It can be done, I'm sure. But it's up to you to work on it and starting to implement it. Or at least start cooperating with the cypherpunks that are working on it. Because, you can be sure that the current governments won't.

Get off my lawn! (Or at least mow it.)

[ancientt]

Your enthusiasm makes me smile young one. Still, until you have tried to move a mountain, I would suggest you be careful trying to convince others that they should. I know, I know, mine is the voice of cynicism, and stodginess, and all that you yearn to break free of, but I too once saw the world as slow and backward and discovered with time that there are sometimes good reasons for the way things are and often great wisdom in the complexity I take for granted.

The Internet is like a grand highway, in fact

My idea here is decentralization, not anonymity.

[Spy der Mann]

My idea is not precisely anonymity, but decentralization.

Allow me to clarify. Recently I've been testing an experimental (still not ready for consumer use) network called I2P. And I realized that some of the forums in there are decentralized. It was like a marvel whose light blinded my eyes. The nature of the network made it impossible to locate (and therefore disrupt) a particular server.

I saw it, and thought: This is tomorrow's internet. The future of the internet is decentralization. Because it makes its

You can't have it both ways

[weierstrass]

The real choice is between a network with true anonymity, without rules and without control. This means lots of freedom - the freedom to share information but also the freedom to spam, to attack, to troll. If current internet alternatives such as DArknet or Tor don't have these problems yet, it's only because they are not big enough.

Or a top-down network like television, where a small number of actors not only produce all the content, but actively make sure that no content gets on to the network which would

Re:

[Spy der Mann]

Thanks - I corrected the entry above. My goal is a truly decentralized internet, maybe not free of evil - but with a structure that will make evil have the least possible consequences.

The current internet model is one prone to SPAM, botnets and DDOS attacks.

Without SPAM, botnets will disminish. Without botnets, DDOS attacks will be more difficult. Without DDOS attacks, SPAM will have a hard time surviving. It's a virtuous circle.

The first measure to elliminate SPAM is to make websites resistant to DDOS atta